Your client service approach

If you can provide strategic advice to your clients, you'll help them meet their personal and business goals. This will position your firm for growth and success.

Key tips for managing your clients

• Focus on adding value and problem solving
• Give clients the option to meet their financial obligations digitally
• Allow clients to access their information immediately
• Explore ways to network better
• Improve your ability to refer.
• Develop a deep understanding of client engagement documentation and what your obligations are.

Client relationship management

The relationship you have with your clients is fundamental to the value of your firm. Getting to know and understand your clients will help you form a valuable relationship. This guide will help you better engage with your clients.

• Podcast: My Client and Me: Building client relationships podcast series
• Podcast: Rehabilitate or dismiss: Managing your client base

Showing reasonable care

Not every client is good. Accepting their word without question can make you liable to a range of adverse claims and reputational damage.

• Video: Client engagement and authority documentation webinar recording
• Video: Client verification and engagement webinar recording

Client referrals

Referring clients should a fundamental part of your risk management strategy. It can also add value to your practice.

• INTHEBLACK: Thriving accounting practice credits close client relationships

What's your service model?

Technology advances and regulatory changes can affect the demand for services such as bookkeeping and tax returns. But focusing on educated clients, business advisory services, the ageing population and new regulations for providing financial advice could help continue to grow your practice.

Good growth opportunities exist in aged care, life planning, financial advice and the restructuring space.

• Video: Guide to advisory with Intuit QuickBooks (sponsored content)
• Video: Virtual controllers: New services for accounting firms (sponsored content)
• Video: Is your client insolvent and how can you help?
• INPRACTICE: Making sense of business valuations in tough economic times
• INPRACTICE: Small business clients need help with more than just the numbers
• INPRACTICE: SMEs urgently seek cash flow advice
• INPRACTICE: How accountants can help with their clients' exit strategies
• Podcast: How practitioners can work with clients facing insolvency

Specialist services

Specialising can be an important driver of success when done well. It allows firms to build on their areas of expertise and become more efficient.

Specialising can achieve greater outcomes for clients and help practitioners remain relevant in an era of digital disruption, particularly in areas like self-managed superannuation funds (SMSFs), business planning, financial services, and technology.

The marriage of the restructuring and turnaround profession with the insolvency profession will also provide opportunities for practitioners to apply their skills in the restructuring space.

• Audit services
• Financial advice
• Wills and estates
• INPRACTICE: Audit guide sets context for inquiry
• INPRACTICE: NZ determined to stamp out rogue insolvency practitioners
• INPRACTICE: New Zealand insolvency law: The times they are a changin'

What's your pricing model?

The traditional time-based billing model for service pricing looks at service, cost, price and the client, and excludes any judgement of value delivered.

Traditional time-based pricing may devalue the services you provide and puts a ceiling on your earning potential. While the time-based model helps ensure you recover the costs of providing the service, it may mean that the client is not able to appreciate the true value of the engagement.

An alternative is value pricing, where prices are set primarily but not exclusively on the value to the client. It can deliver higher margins and more satisfied clients, allowing firms to increase their profitability and productivity. Value pricing is not without its problems, however. The value is set from the perceived value to the client and this can be difficult to determine.

A good strategy is to develop a flexible pricing model with a range of options, depending on the level of service the client wants.